Posts Tagged ‘Israeli Army’

Israel’s Air Force attacked a gun battery of the Syrian army in retaliation of the mortar shell that fell in Israeli territory Saturday afternoon. The IDF Spokesperson stated that the Israeli army views the Syrian regime as being responsible for everything that takes place under its rule and would not tolerate any attempt against Israel’s sovereignty and the security of its citizens.

It is estimated that the mortar shell was yet another “spillover” from the ongoing war north of Israel’s border, the third this week. No one was hurt and there was no damage to property.

IDF forces early Wednesday morning raided and ransacked the Arab radio station al-Sanabel in Dura, near Hebron, detained five employees for interrogation, and closed the station down for three months. The action was taken in response to incitement that was being broadcast by the station. According to the IDF Spokesperson, al-Sanabel regularly broadcast anti-Israeli content, supported attacks on Israeli citizens, congratulated terrorists for carrying out acts of murder, and encouraged Arab participation in riots.

The IDF force left a closure order on the station’s sealed door.

Arab media identified the detainees as station chief Ahmad al-Darawish, and employees Muhammad al-Sus, Nidal Amro, Muntaser Nassar, and Hamed al-Nammura. Their homes were also raided.

An IDF spokesman issued a statement in Arabic saying Israeli army, police, and civil administration authority forces closed al-Sanabel under a military order accusing the radio station of broadcasting programs that incite against Israel.

On Sunday afternoon, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit the city of Sderot in Israel, no injuries have been reported. In response to the attack, IAF aircraft immediately targeted Hamas positions in the northern Gaza Strip. This was the 14th rocket fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel since the beginning of 2016. But this time, the Israeli response was swift and refreshingly “disproportionate.”

IDF Spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said in a statement: ”The IDF remains committed to the stability of the region and operated in order to bring quiet to the people of southern Israel. When terrorists in Hamas’ Gaza Strip, driven by a radical agenda based on hatred, attack people in the middle of the summer vacation, their intentions are clear- to inflict pain, cause fear and to terrorize.”

According to Ma’an, the IDF fired missiles into the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun on Sunday afternoon and evening, injuring at least five Arabs. Reports of an air raid over Beit Hanoun emerged at around 10:30 PM, with IAF shelling. Earlier in the day, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip announced that a young Arab man in his twenties was injured as a result of an Israeli artillery shelling targeting a military training ground in Beit Hanoun near the Erez crossing. Local sources later told Ma’an that two other Arabs were also injured, though the details remained unclear.

An Israel air force plane was used to strike the first target, while an Israeli army tank was used to attack the second.

Eyewitnesses told Ma’an that a rocket fired by an Israeli drone hit a water reservoir and another shell landed in an open area in Beit Hanoun. The Hamas “Palestinian Information Center” reported that a “Palestinian citizen was injured in the face” by shrapnel of an artillery shell. The report quoted local sources as saying that Israeli tanks fired three shells at an agricultural land in the al-Masriyyin neighborhood in Beit Hanoun. Furthermore, the report said Israeli artillery shells landed in the Filistin training ground which Hamas fighters use for military training.

All of the above were signals from Israel’s new Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beiteinu) that the old “proportionate” retaliation policy whereby a volley of rockets from Gaza that fall mostly in empty fields in Israel is met with a lazy IAF attack, several hours later, against terrorist facilities that had been cleared of their inhabitants well in advance — all that is over.

Liberman is changing the rules in Gaza, and it appears that from now on, a provocation, no matter how small, will be met with a fierce and destructive reaction—last night’s attacks hit some 50 targets—that might change the calculus on the other side as well.

One side benefit of the IAF and tank attacks Sunday was that Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’ military wing who was supposed to give a watershed announcement on his group’s policy, canceled his planned speech for security reasons.

Judea and Samaria (TPS) – Israeli security forces conducted several operations in Palestinian Authority towns on Monday night, arresting at least ten terror suspects and seizing weapons, ammunition, money, and vehicles that were all suspected to have been used or had been allocated to be used for terror purposes.

The forces carried out an operation in the Mount Hebron village of Dura in support of efforts to arrest those involved in the shooting attack on Route 60 that killed Rabbi Michael Mark on July 1.

After conducting two waves of arrests over the past several days, they raided the house that had sheltered the shooter, Mohammed Jabarah al-Faqih, after the terror attack and they arrested a relative of his for aiding him. Additionally, Israeli army and police forces seized a car that was purchased by the terrorist with the alleged intention of using it for another attack.

IDF troops in Hizme confiscated funds that it claims were meant to be used by the Hamas terror organization. The troops also arrested the individual who had the money in his possession.

Security forces using police intelligence discovered a Kalashnikov rifle and ammunition in the village of Urqub Jamla and arrested the individual hiding them. They also seized two vehicles in the nearby village of Sa’ir that were used to carry out terror attacks as well.

Furthermore, Palestinian Authority Arab rioters threw rocks at Israeli buses on the way to Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. A total of 24 buses transported Jews to the holy site overnight. The rioters also rolled burning tires towards the buses, but there were no casualties.

Seven terror suspects were arrested overnight in other routine IDF activity throughout Judea and Samaria. Three of them are members of Hamas, while the rest are suspected of participating in violent riots directed at Israeli civilians and security forces. They were taken for questioning.

Israeli farmers in the Gaza Belt region were allowed to go back to working their fields near the southern border on Sunday.

Security officials said they don’t believe Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorist organization is seeking an escalation in tensions with Israel at this time, according to a report on Channel 10 television news.

Sources said it is believed a smaller terrorist group was responsible for the rocket attack that was fired at southern Israeli communities over the weekend.

Nevertheless, the IDF is continuing its search for cross-border terror attack tunnels along the Gaza border.

Nahal Oz (TPS) – An Israeli army vehicle was hit by gunfire from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday just hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops stationed on Gaza border and inspected a recently uncovered Hamas “terror tunnel” reaching into Israeli territory.

A military vehicle was struck near Nahal Oz, an Israeli community just beyond the security fence bordering the northern Gaza Strip, the IDF announced. The vehicle suffered damage but no one was injured in the incident.

Earlier in the day, Netanyahu toured the southern area of the Gazan border accompanied by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Col. Gadi Eizenkot and inspected the Hamas tunnel uncovered by IDF forces several weeks ago. Netanyahu and Ya’alon were briefed by Gen. Eyal Zamir, Director of the Southern Command, on the most up-to-date Gaza survey findings.

“Tomorrow is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Seventy years ago we were like a leaf in the wind, with no defense force and helpless. We were slaughtered,” Netanyahu told soldiers of the 51st battalion stationed at the border. “Today we have a country and we have an army. We have the ability to defend ourselves on all fronts, both near and remote. What drives me is to secure the future of Israel and its people.”

“We are in the eye of the storm,” Netanyahu continued. “You see what’s happening. Millions are fleeing for their lives to Europe, and we have ISIS in the Golan on the other side [of the border], and ISIS here on the other side,” he said, referring to extremist forces in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Desert.

“We are basically in the eye of the storm, and relative to the area we are the most stable, tranquil, and safest country.”

A recent meeting between National Security Council officials and the left-wing Breaking the Silence group barely made headlines but was a significant move in President Barack Obama’s agenda to justify his view that Israel is an “occupier.”

It was President Obama who succeeded in removing AIPAC as the default representative of what is called the “pro-Israel lobby” by opening the Oval Office to J Street, the left-wing group that thinks being “pro-Israel” means accommodating Hamas, expelling 600,000 Jews from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and granting statehood Palestinian Authority inside Israel’s borders.

Calling itself “pro-Israel, pro-peace,” and with generous funding from far-left billionaire George Soros, J Street’s launch in 2008 coincided with the campaign and election of President Obama.

Since then, Obama has shifted farther and farther to adopt the Palestinian Authority view of Israel as an occupier, and of Jews in settlements and even half of Jerusalem as “illegal” and “illegitimate.” Listening to leftist Jews telling him what he wants to hear has strengthened his belief that the “peace process” is the panacea for the Middle East.

Obama also has grabbed every opportunity to twist Judaism into his vision of a religion that can used to support his agenda, and he has plenty of support from Reform Jewish leaders to become a modern Korach, the Biblical figure who rebelled against Moses’ authority by claiming that the entire Jewish community is just as holy as he is.

The end of the story is that Korach and his 250 followers were swallowed up in the ground, which opened up to bury them alive, and that seems to be the same fate for President Obama’s foreign policy, especially when it comes to any place in the Middle East.

Instead of accepting reality, he is trying to hold on to an illusion. Breaking the Silence is a new pawn for President Obama to use in his chess game to check Israel, and particularly Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Senior White officials welcomed Breaking the Silence, which was formed by a disgruntled Israeli-American soldier whose agenda is the same as Obama’s. Both of them have adopted the Palestinian Authority term “occupation” to describe the presence of approximately 300,000 Jews in Judea and Samaria and another quarter of a million or so in half a dozen Jerusalem neighborhoods. Tens of thousands of the residents are from the United States.

Reform Jewish leaders , who call themselves rabbis, do not represent Judaism, J Street does not represent the pro-Israel lobby, and Breaking the Silence does not represent the views of more than a tiny minority of Israelis.

But President Obama is playing magician to try to show that all three groups are the Jewish establishment.

The meeting between White House officials with Breaking the Silence was the first ever and was held only days after the anti-IDF organization staged an anti-IDF exhibition with the sponsorship of the Swiss government.

The President shrewdly made sure the meeting would not be held in the White House, making it easier for him to get smart and drop Breaking the Silence before it costs him support from the real mainstream Jewish community that knows the Israeli Defense Forces separate Israel from annihilation.

Haaretz reported that the meeting took place “at the offices of an American nonprofit in the capital.” A good guess – and it’s only as guess – would be that those offices belonged to J Street or perhaps more likely the Washington-based Foundation for Middle East Peace, whose president Matt Duss arranged the meeting.

The group’s website states:

The Foundation for Middle East Peace was created in 1979…to promote a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through education and advocacy…. the Israeli-Palestinian conflict [is] at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict….

In 1992, in view of the growing threat of Israeli settlements to peace, the Foundation introduced the bimonthly Report on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories.

Breaking the Silence is trying to go mainstream. Obama’s “shared values” are more with the left-wing group than they are with the real mainstream in Israel and in the United States.